NYTimes Economics Columnist w/Physics Degree Has Ed Solution

by Jim Horn

As a veteran educator of educators, I am accustomed to hearing how much people, regardless of education, training, or native wit, believe they know about education and school policy, especially when they find out how I make a living. 

"History and philosophy of education, huh?  Well, let me tell you why schools are so bad. . ."

And listening to them is easier than explaining how history or philosophy may be relevant to policy talk, implementation, and practice, if the powerful elites who make policy were not committed to remaking the same self-serving system that the protectors of the social status quo have been imposing for 150 years at least.  

Today's businessmen who run the paternalistic and segregated schools for the disadvantaged are no less enthralled by rote learning and soul-crushing discipline systems than were the Latin grammar school teachers of the 19th Century, who cried out in protest when Horace Mann suggested "moral suasion" as an alternative to beating schoolchildren into submission.

Nor are today's edupreneurs any less excited about the use of racist "achievement" testing than were the social efficiency zealots like Stanford U.'s Elwood Cubberley a hundred years ago, who declared in the foreword of Louis Terman's 1914 classic, The Measure of Intelligence,

Questions relating to the choice of studies, vocational guidance, schoolroom procedure, the grading of pupils, promotional schemes, the study of the retardation of children in the schools, juvenile delinquency, and the proper handling of subnormals on the one hand and gifted children on the other— all alike acquire new meaning and significance when viewed in the light of the measurement of intelligence as outlined in this volume. . . .More than all other forms of data combined, such tests give the necessary information from which a pupil’s possibilities of future mental growth can be foretold, and upon which his further education can be most profitably directed. 

Take, for instance, the ignorant remarks by modern day efficiency "expert," economics reporter, and former NYTimes editorial board member, Eduardo Porter.  Porter has taken Cubberley's fascination with data one step further, to claim that raising test scores, in fact, is the best indicator that inequality has been, or is soon to be, eradicated:

Narrowing proficiency gaps that emerge way before college would probably do more to increase the nation’s college graduation rate than offering universal community college, easier terms on student loans or more financial aid.

How does Eduardo know this?  Can't say, since he does not offer any evidence to support his outrageous claim.  

Nor does Eduardo, whose degree is in quantum physics, say anything about new evidence that points to more and more underemployment for those who do graduate from college:

The dire experience of these workers with college degrees displacing workers with less formal education stands in strong contrast to the widely-held view in economic and policymaking circles that the main problem facing the U.S. economy is a shortage of highly-educated workers. If college-educated workers were in short supply, then we would expect their wages to rise as employers attempted to lure them away from their competitors. Yet the inflation-adjusted value of the wages of college-educated workers has barely increased in the 21st century.

What’s more, between 2000 and 2014 (the last year for which complete data are available), the employment of college-educated workers has increased much more rapidly in low-earning industries than in high-earnings ones. If there weren’t enough college graduates to go around, then the opposite should be happening because high-earnings industries would presumably be outcompeting low-earnings industries to hire college-educated workers. Our new analysis of the data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators strongly suggests that college-educated workers are more likely to “filter down” the job ladder than to climb it.

Eduardo does offer some data, however, that suggests that our past three decades of fixation on testing proficiency while forgetting about rising resegregation contributes nothing positive for either test scores or diversity in schools.  

Extrapolating from Sean Reardon's paper on NAEP trends, Eduardo claims the black-white achievement gap has dropped by "as much as 50 percent compared with what it was 30 to 40 years before." 

What we see in NAEP trends, however, is that the test score gaps were lowest when school desegregation was at its highest (click charts below), a correlation that is entirely lost on the middle class neolibs at the New York Times who require education fixes that don't work in order to maintain and grow the class divisions that provide the unscalable wall between Eduardo and those he presumes to save by raising their test scores.

When Marian Wright Edelman Forgot History

Yesterday Marian Wright Edelman weighed in on the ESEA "debate" by coming out strong against the the House version of NCLB Corporate Takeover 2.0. 

Sadly in doing so, Edelman jumps onto the rickety testing-for-civil-rights bandwagon that is aimed directly for the ditch after almost 30 years of running down the same rutted path.  Obviously, Edelman still believes what liberals pretended to believe in 1988 with the passage of Hawkins-Stafford, which set in motion the standards and testing juggernaut that has been effectively used to punish and deprive poor children, rather than to provide equity and equality. 

Interestingly, we see that since 1988 when the standardistas took charge and the Rule of the Business Roundtable began in earnest, the "achievement gap" that had been closing during the years of school desegregation and focus on equality, began to open up once more and resegregation began, and continues today. See charts below.

More testing to close the achievement gaps, anyone??  What fool would believe that another generation of the same "high standards and accountability" would produce different results?  Oh, yes, there is the corrupt corporate water carrier, Jonah Edelman, for one.

The Hard Bigotry of Low Expectations in Florida

With the ink barely dry on the outcome of the Presidential election in Florida, the FL school Board is now looking for new and innovative ways to keep the FCAT,  virtual schools and private money machine rolling. This way Jeb Bush's buddies. K-12 and other for-profit education outfits who make their money off the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable children and their teachers can keep their wheels greased till 2018 under this proposal.

The soft bigotry of low expectations used by these privatizers and profiteers for the past decade to push test and punishment and hold teachers accountable for the failures of Wall Street and politicians, is now being used by the actual bigots to keep things running smoothly for their bottom line.

With new proficiency targets for poor black and brown children, their no excuses mythology that they worked so hard to create for three decades has to be replaced with some other malarkey as our Vice President would say. I would say bullshit. The corporate education and testing industrial complex's powerfully financed propaganda machine is finding new and creative ways to maintain their hold on bankrupt corporate education policies that have done nothing to help close the achievement gap, the economic gap or the racial gap.

It's truly breathtaking how these people manage to think up more insidious ways to make money by pitting children against one another, divide teachers and blackmail administrations while wreaking havoc on the nation's public schools. 

AlterNet [1] / By Sarah Seltzer [2]

Florida to Grade Black Students on a Different Scale Than White Students?

November 9, 2012  |  

Postracial America, we are not, second Obama term or no second term. From the kids tweeting insanely racist remarks about President Obama's victory, to Oklahoma's vote banning affirmative action [3], it's clear that racist attitudes remain prevalent for many Americans.

But the new education policy in Florida seems particularly emblematic of our far from post-racial landscape. The school board in Florida created a set of achievement goals that differ based on students' racial backgrounds.[4] Rather than focusing solely on things like economic backgrounds, the board's choice to use race-based categories has attracted plenty of attention. The board of ed claims it is using the reality on the ground to combat the achievement gap, but the message the goals are sending has got many educators and parents crying foul:

The plan, which sets achievement targets to be met by 2018 based on each students’ race or ethnic background, has already encountered opposition from educators and activists across the state [5].
Juan Lopez, who is a magnet coordinator at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach, said that setting different standards for kids based on their background was “off base,” and an implication that it is race, above all, that determines the level of students’ achievement.

In other words, the state is fighting the achievement gap by acknowledging it openly, or as Cord Jefferson writes in an essay on affirmative action at Gawker: [6]

In an effort to close the racial achievement gap that plagues much of America, the board decided to use that gap[4] to set parameters for what it expects children of different races to achieve over the next six years. Breaking from George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind," which demanded uniform achievement goals for all students in an effort to avoid "soft bigotry," Florida is now going to have racially stratified educational targets in math and reading. In other words, black children performing more poorly than white children won't just be tolerated, it will be the rule.

Needless to say, some state-level activists are horrified by the message [5] that these new goals seems to send to communities in Florida.

... Palm Beach County School Board vice-chairwoman Debra Robinson isn’t buying the rationale.
“I’m somewhere between complete and utter disgust and anger and disappointment with humanity,” Robinson told the Post. She said she has been receiving complaints from upset black and Hispanic parents since the state board took its action this week.
Robinson called the state board’s actions essentially “proclaiming racism” and said she wants Palm Beach County to continue to educate every child with the same expectations, regardless of race.

While numerical-based goals are important for school districts to get funding and function, these kinds of blowups are examples of the shortcomings of a numbers-based, testing-based approach. Yes, each child starts in a different place with different structural and personal advantages and disadvantages, and therefore his or her achievement should be taken in context rather than simplistically.

Discourse Analysis of NYTimes Piece on Poverty and Achievement

I have been reading Gerald Coles for a long time, and I am glad to see Anthony Cody hosting him here to get underneath the neoliberal rhetoric of the Times to see its real influences:

Gerald Coles: The Growing Educational Achievement Gap: Don't Think What You Might Think You Should Think

By Anthony Cody on February 15, 2012 5:51 AM

Guest post by Gerald Coles

Last week the New York Times provided valuable, disturbing information by reporting recent research on the growing educational achievement gap between rich and poor students, which has grown substantially over the past few decades, even while the achievement gap between black and white students has narrowed. As the author of one study put it, "family income appears more determinative of educational success than race."

Yet, as is often true of the Times, what it gives with one hand, it takes with the other. For example, as the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has long documented, while the paper of record frequently provides factual information about events, its interpretation of the facts buttresses against drawing the "wrong" conclusions about political-economic power relationships.

A clue lies in the opening sentence of the article, which offers a summary of a presumed long-held national expectation. "Education," the reader is told , "was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults."

The passive voice in this sentence expeditiously cloaks a contentious history that, if included in the article, would raise critical questions both about the assumption and whether education should be the determining factor for social well-being. With respect to the assumption, as John Marsh documents in his recent book, Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality, during the nineteenth century "public education encountered as much opposition as it did support," with few people believing "that education alone or education at all" would offer the nation's children a path out of poverty and to occupational mobility and economic security. Moreover, although during the 20th century, particularly from the Great Depression onward, many Americans did see education as an economic and social elevator, in practice college was less necessary because high wage jobs were plentiful for many millions without higher education. As these jobs have disappeared in the U.S., Marsh argues, a greater focus on educational attainment has served to displace "the debate about social class and economic power" and "the causes of and the cure for sustained poverty and increasing inequality."

The Times article contributes to this change of focus by reporting on the educational achievement gap but then citing "expert opinion" that discourages readers from thinking that poor children's education would be helped by directly addressing fundamental disparities in class and economic power. The Times' expert opinion removes from the reader's focus any thoughts that a redistribution of wealth, which would include the use of that redistribution to create end-of-poverty legislation, would serve to reduce or eliminate the social class achievement gap. Expert opinion makes clear that while affluent families know how to use their income, time and privilege to nurture their children's minds and abilities, these advantages would be wasted in the hands of poor parents.

One of the experts quoted, John J. Heckman, has built a prominent career trying to improve parenting skills and enrichment educational programs for poor children. Assumed in this effort is the belief that the poverty of the families served can be left untouched, that the children can remain poor and that the overall educational conditions of the children can remain in an abysmal state. He warns us, with regard to poverty, not to go back to the time (whatever time that might have been!) when we thought that "poverty was just a matter of income, and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children. If people conclude that -- if they want to redistribute income -- that would be a mistake" (his heartfelt word in the Times article).

This view is reinforced in the article by another expert, Charles Murray of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. Murray (co-author of the racist and classist book, The Bell Curve) has devoted his life to the claim that differences between the rich and poor are largely due to genetics, that is, the unequal inherited intelligence favoring the rich. As Murray concluded in the Times article, income inequality is "more of a symptom than a cause" (that is, were Murray to speak frankly, the poor, in his view, are genetically dumber). A great expert for the Times to quote!

The last expert cited is Douglas J. Besharov, also of the American Enterprise Institute, but listed in the article only as a "fellow of the Atlantic Council" which, the article fails to note, is a think tank servicing global corporations.

Besharov's aid to the rich, like that of the other two experts quoted, has included his opposition to government policies to end poverty because, in his informed view, the U.S. has no genuine poverty! "Rhetoric about cutting 'poverty' is misleadingly outmoded," Besharov has intoned, because "almost all Americans already live far above subsistence poverty." (Yes, he really wrote that.)

The Times article leaves Besharov with the last word about the growing education gap between the rich and poor, a takeaway message meant to leave the reader scratching her or his head: "The problem is a puzzle. No one has the slightest idea what will work."

Yes, there's an educational gap between rich and poor, but let no reader of the article think that any of the following, using a redistribution of wealth, would significantly end the achievement gap:

--Work that provides parents with a good income for raising a family. That won't help!

--A workweek with reasonable hours that leave a parent time and energy to parent. Forget that!

--National health insurance for all, good housing for all, good nutrition for all, schools fully funded, free college for all, etc. etc. (you can finish the list that you think would serve to create an equitable society and translate into solid educational achievement for all youngsters). Mistakes, mistakes! The implementation of these ideas would be money down the drain.

At least that's what the 1% and their scholarly troops would like us to believe.

What do you think now?

Gerald Coles is a full-time researcher, writer, and lecturer on the psychology and politics of literacy and education. He is the author of several books, including Reading the Naked Truth: Literacy, Legislation, and Lies, as well as numerous articles in education, psychology and psychiatry journals. Before devoting himself to full-time research and writing, he was on the faculties of the Department of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the University of Rochester. His chapter, "Reading Policy: Evidence Vs. Power," will appear in the forthcoming Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (Sage). He lives in Rochester, NY. He can be reached at geraldcoles@rochester.rr.com

What Does the Data Tell Us? Part II

What Does the Data Tell Us?

 From the Texas Tribune:

Marder, it should be noted, has a vested interest. In addition to being a professor in the University of Texas' department of physics and a member of their highly regarded Center for Nonlinear Dynamics, he is also the co-director of the university's UTeach program, which focuses on preparing and encouraging university graduates to become secondary math and science teachers — a boost of which the state desperately needs.. . .

. . . .After looking at the data, Marder has yet to be convinced that any teaching solution has been found that can overcome the detrimental effects of poverty on a large scale — and that we may be looking for solutions in the wrong place. 

Bloomberg and Klein Now See No Need to Identify Minorities in NYC Schools

(Photo: AP) After building their corporate education reform agenda on years of phony numbers and lies (see also Enron, WorldCom, AIG, Goldman Sachs, etc.), the chief architect of the NYC fraud had to finally face the media cameras, at least for 20 minutes or so. So when it became clear to the world that the Manhattan Miracle was just another corporate scam and that all scores plummeted and the black-white test score gap doubled in one year as a result of reality intruding upon the Bloomberg lie, the froggy Prince croaked:

"Lots of kids don't want to go to college. They want to go off and have a career," he said. "The last time I checked, Lady Gaga was doing just fine after only one year in college."

Too bad the only career preparation that Bloomberg-Klein pretend to offer is, that's right, college.  Nothing at all in gender-bending pop star preparation, or any other.

To make the real scores less embarrassing to Bloomberg's high-salaried covey of white, thin-lipped Brits running the City's ed charade, Klein has been instructed to email his pal, Arne Duncan, to tell him that the federally-mandated policy of identifying minorities could now be "problematic and confusing:"

. . . NY1 reports that NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein sent an email to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan saying that NYC school officials don't really want to classify students by race, per federal law, "[It] may well be problematic and confusing for many of our community members, particularly Hispanics, and could create a difficult public debate about the collection of this information."

Perhaps Duncan, too,  will decide that the solution to the minority-white achievement gap is to declare universal color-blindness.  Oh, I almost forgot--Dunc has something a more "scientific"way to hide the disparity--it's called value-added growth models.

"Irrepressible" Bloggers vs. the Borg

Jay Mathews is the insider's insider on corporate education reform issues, serving as the media mouthpiece for the psychological sterilization movement of KIPP and the KIPP knock-offs.  The Elder himself, Bill Gates, carries a supply of Jay's KIPP book to hand out to anyone interested in the Oligarchs' choice of a final solution to educating the poor and the brown of urban America.

At the same time KIPP is becoming the urban model for corporate ed reform, the movement is in the process of pivoting from the the phony campaign under Bush ostensibly to close the black-white achievement gap, with the same high expectations for all, thus avoiding "the soft bigotry of low expectations," blah-blah, to a new phony campaign of assuring that poor children have the same access to high quality teachers and schools because education is now the "civil rights issue of our generation."  Blah, blah, blah.  While the pivot leaves in place the high-stakes standardized testing that declared 30-40 percent of public schools failures and charter targets under the last 9 years of NCLB,  the pivot demands a shift in what is measured by the tests and how it is measured.  The achievement gap has left the stadium, ladies and gentlemen, while growth models have taken the stage.  Now that the urban school systems have been blown up, thus clearing the way for the corporate charterites,  the canyon between test scores of the rich and poor is no longer of interest.  Indeed, the achievement gap has become a "mindless measure," to use the words of Jay Mathews.

The focus now is on "a year's worth of individual student growth" for a year's worth of teaching (much more on this later, with a feature on the Wizard of Oz, Bill Sanders).  In short, the new target of corporate ed reform is to blow up, or disrupt, the teaching profession by measuring effective teaching on how much test score growth a teacher can oversee.  And as the new CEO-led KIPP chain gangs are to replace urban public schools, so then an endless stream of non-union white missionary temps are being prepared to replace the professionals who now staff the urban schools.  Test score gains, or lack thereof, will be used to justify the firing of professionals and the use of temps from TFA and the TFA knock-offs that Arne fondly calls alternative teacher certification programs.

When I challenged Mathews for his commentary in WaPo supporting the pivoting away from the achievement gap, he responded with the piece quoted in its entirety below.  You will notice that the first thing he does is not respond to the challenge but, rather, to change the subject and, instead, to challenge Ira Socol's insightful piece that I recently posted. 

As you will see from the comments, Jay bit off more than he could chew when he challenged Socol, who is not impressed with nor intimidated by the fact that Mathews has the full backing of the Billionaire Boys' Club and all the "thinking" that their tanks can buy.  A good number of other comments, including my own, are left out of the edited comment section below.  I wanted to focus on the back and forth between Jay, the hapless interrogator, and Ira, the intelligent respondent.

Jim Horn of the Schools Matter blog, one of my favorite hecklers, posted a critique of my recent column, "Forget about the achievement gap." He says:

Obviously, Jay has joined other bold reformers such as the recently-fired Bret Schundler of New Jersey whose efforts to remake New Jersey schools in the corporate image led him to denounce New Jersey Public Schools as a “wretched system” and the state’s #1 national rankings on the NAEP in both 4th and 8th grade reading and math as “irrelevant.” For bold reformers like Jay and Bret, or Arne and Michelle, if the facts don’t support your desired results anymore, those facts no longer matter. Poof.

Jay and the the new generation of reformers doing the same thing as the last generation (when will they become the status quo?) would rather look at test score growth over time, especially when big achievement gap closing claims by your favorite politicians do not materialize. Focusing on individual gains makes the disparity between the haves and the have-nots much easier to ignore, since this new value-added universe is not even interested in those troublesome group comparisons any longer that are based on the poverty chasm. Unless, of course, the reformers need to shut down your neighborhood school and turn it into a corporate-styled testing madrasah, i. e., charter school. Then your percentile ranking becomes a crucial tool in deciding who is in that bottom five percent that just keeps replenishing itself as the last group is scraped off to become charterized.

I am not sure I fit well with the important present and former policymakers he cites, but it is always good to be noticed by Jim. He is a great writer, and validates my existence on the planet.
In his most recent post he also hands me some ammo to fire back at him. He quotes an online letter to President Obama from a reader, Ira Socol. Socol is critical of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), as an example of the kind of charter school the president admires, and compares KIPP unfavorably---too rigid, too uncreative, too imperialist---to the Sidwell Friends School which Obama's daughters attend. This is reminiscent of a point made by the late, great Gerald W. Bracey at the beginning of the Obama administration.

Sadly, Socol makes the same mistake Jim has made many times. He cites as evidence for his views of teaching at KIPP and Sidwell some descriptions he found on their Web sites. Any good teacher would tell you that is no way to judge a school. Socol gives no indication he has ever spent time inside a KIPP school, or Sidwell. Neither has Jim, unless I have missed something. They are among the many KIPP critics who consider it sufficient to judge schools by what they read on the Internet.
I think they should visit the schools they write about and tell us what they see. All of the KIPP schools I know have an open door policy. There are 99 KIPP schools in 20 states and D.C., including one in each of the 20 largest cities except Phoenix. I have visited many KIPP schools and Sidwell. I think Socol, and Jim, will be surprised, once they get inside, at how little difference there is between the great teaching going on at both places.

By Jay Mathews  |  September 1, 2010; 2:00 PM ET
  

Comments

Well Jay, let me recommend a few journalism tricks. One would be to read further - that is by using Google to look for my other writing on the subject. Another would be to email or call the subject of one of your columns to confirm what you are about to write.

So yes Jay, I have been in KIPP schools. That was not the point of this particular blog which was focused on philosophies expressed to the Obama Administration. I have been in KIPP schools (3) and - personally - I have found them terrifying.

But more than that Jay, I have some really extensive experience in the types of communities KIPP seeks to serve. I know these kids, and I know what they could do if they were offered the kind of educational opportunities available at Sidwell (or Cranbrook, or St. Ann's or etc).

And I know one more thing. Barack and Michelle would never send their daughters to a KIPP school, nor tolerate KIPP-style education in any school their daughters attended. As I've said, KIPP is the way the white and powerful want the poor of color to be educated. But they aren't suggesting it because that's a path to equality. They are suggesting it for just the opposite reason - they don't want the competition for their own children.
- Ira Socol

Posted by: irasocol | September 1, 2010 3:23 PM | Report abuse

Ira---Too impatient to wait, I have searched google for your writings on KIPP. I am far from an expert Web surfer, but the pieces I found that mentioned KIPP did not cite any personal experiences or observations. So I am doubly eager to give you a chance to do that here. We had one KIPP visitor who was critical of the school she saw, and I ran her comments in full, but it was a comment she posted here anonymously and she declined to respond to my request that she identify herself and tell us more. Since you have visited three KIPP schools, you could give us a much deeper critic's view of what you saw.

Posted by: Jay Mathews | September 1, 2010 4:15 PM | Report abuse

Mr. Mathews:
I visited KIPP schools with "invited observation teams" in 2007 and 2008. KIPP Ascend Charter School (Chicago) in 2007, KIPP Lead College Prep (Gary, IN) and KIPP Indianapolis College Preparatory School in 2008. I am not willing to say who brought me in, that might threaten a person's job.

What concerned me? An absolute lack of tolerance for mental, learning, and behavioural diversity, in classroom after classroom, corridor after corridor. Of course I come from a Special Education background, so this was far more disturbing than it might be to others. I also found the brutality of teacher-student, and especially in Indianapolis, administrator-student communication fairly shocking. If you would send your grandchildren there, you're a different kind of parent than I am.

I also found the educational philosophy quite flawed. Though there was substantial "one on one" time in all three schools, I saw almost no pedagogical or curricular differentiation, which is the heart of creating success for the diversity of students in any school.

But I will not deny that I am, philosophically, anti-colonial. I do not think that we have to "force these kids to be white." Nor do I believe that "gazing at the teacher" is anything but a power-relationship statement. If you follow the links my blog post offered, you would have found these conversations. If the first step offered poor children of color is being made to become "white" - and then they are expected to catch up, obviously they never will.

I do see a great many schools each year in my multiple roles. I see great schools, I see lousy schools. I see great charters, I see lousy charters. Great schools in my sense of the word empower students to build their own identities, their own toolbelts, their own skillsets, which they can carry through their lives. They prepare students to be themselves within the wider world. And I believe that every child can experience that kind of school.

I will not accept the idea that (a) we compare KIPP to the worst schools in America (that is NOT the change we believe in), or (b) that we accept that rich kids get one kind of education and poor kids get another (that's not new, we already have that).

But just one question Mr. Mathews, I've seen lots of KIPP demographics. Where, exactly, are all those middle class KIPP parents you speak of?
- Ira Socol

Posted by: irasocol | September 1, 2010 4:29 PM | Report abuse

Ira---Thanks very much for your comment. I would still like to run a more detailed post by you that tells us exactly what you saw and heard at which schools that led to the conclusions you draw. Some readers might interpret the same events differently. It would help everyone to get clearer sense of what moved you. I visited the Indianapolis school in 2008 also, if my memory is correct, and I saw things there I had not seen at any other KIPP schools, particularly students insulting each other in the hallways. The principal was not there that day for me to ask about this. I visited KIPP Ascend and KIPP Lead in 2009 and did not see anything that bothered me. They seemed to be productive and happy places to learn, similar to the 38 other KIPP schools I had visited. 

I know you are not a reporter, and prefer to get right to the point. But I think it would help the rest of us to read what you saw and heard, and see what the KIPP people at those schools have to say about that. Let me know. mathewsj@washpost.com

Posted by: Jay Mathews | September 1, 2010 5:11 PM | Report abuse

Ira--- I forgot to answer yr last question. The college educated middle class KIPP parents I spoke to were in Atlanta and LA, and I am told there are some in DC whom I havent met yet. Since about 10 percent of KIPP students nationally are not low-income, I suspect there are a few middle class kids in nearly every school. One of our reporters told me she was trying to choose between KIPP and a regular DC school in an affluent neighborhood, Janney. I told her I thought KIPP was the better bet. But I believe she chose the regular school.

Posted by: Jay Mathews | September 1, 2010 5:23 PM | Report abuse

Ira Socol: I will add a couple of things: First, I'm not sure it is possible for a reporter, certainly a national education reporter, to visit a school and see much more than the best "Potemkin Village" the school can construct. The same goes for politicians, especially celebrity politicians. And it might go for "invited educational observers" as well. However, the "tech guy," universally viewed as somehow "unimportant," sees and hears a lot. I'm not targeting KIPP here. At universities and K-12 schools I have seen and heard amazing things, including way more confidential information than should ever be disclosed.

That said: Let me offer you a couple of scenes.

In Chicago I saw a young teacher working one-on-one with a series of students who needed reading help. A few things stood out. The students who came to him were all, quite obviously, struggling with different aspects of the reading process. One had essentially no phonological awareness, one was really struggling with the symbols (he could not, as an example, associate the lower case letters with the equivalent upper case letters), a third read fluently but with almost zero comprehension.

The teacher, very clearly untrained in any of this, repeated the same efforts with all the kids. He was clearly operating from a script. And as his efforts inevitably failed, he became angry with the students, repeatedly blaming them for "not trying hard enough." The child with no phonological awareness was called "lazy" repeatedly. KIPP only phenomenon? Of course not, but I saw similar scenes throughout all the buildings.

In Gary I saw more than one teacher encourage students to belittle and demean students who were struggling to stick with the "SLANT" program. As I believe most WaPo reporters would struggle if these rules applied in staff meetings. The encouragement of "pack cruelty" was something else I observed in all three schools.

In Indianapolis I saw appalling student-to-student behaviour, but honestly, I thought it fairly closely mimicked the communication system between the school's adults and the children. That school (and there were echoes of this in the others) was all about "top down power" - yes - very old-school British in the "hidden curriculum" - which is, in every school, the curriculum which really matters.

What I saw almost none of in any of these schools was student-led, or student-centred learning, much less any student-generated context. These classrooms are training followers, not leaders, and not collaborators.

Now, sure, I have no doubt that there are parents who want this system. There have been military-style schools and reductionist hyper-discipline schools forever. But that is not the way the American elites are trained. They get very different environments. And they get those because that top of the American economic pyramid has always been about creativity and flexibility and rapid adjustment. Never about compliance. Never about staring at your superiors.
- Ira Socol

Posted by: irasocol | September 1, 2010 5:40 PM | Report abuse

For Ira, also if you could recall the actual words the Gary teacher said, that would help.

Posted by: Jay Mathews | September 1, 2010 6:10 PM | Report abuse 

Mr. Mathews:
I have no intention of giving the actual quotes of the teachers in Gary in this forum, and I will explain why.

If I provide the actual words, the KIPP/TFA machine will "fire up" and claim that I am mistaking "peer mentoring" and "cohort building" and "positive pressure" for bullying. They will focus on the words themselves and not the faces of the children being tormented, nor the question, "is bullying good educational policy?

Suffice it to say that in KIPP classrooms I have seen teachers encourage children to humiliate others. And this is done with the "pack" using the same words, as if scripted. You may see that as positive, I see it as hazing, and perhaps a significant reason for KIPP's rather stunning attrition rate. http://epicpolicy.org/newsletter/2010/06/new-kipp-study-underestimates-attrition-effects-0 A rate the KIPP Foundation seems to go to great lengths to obscure.

I do want to add one other question: Who, Mr. Mathews, paid for your traveling to all these KIPP schools around the country? And why? There is an awful lot of "Vioxx Research" in education these days, with people who profit from one reform project or another funding studies which often hype the positive and gloss over the "side effects." (The Washington Post Company is one company which does profit directly from current Obama Administration educational policies http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/08/higher_ed_community_focuses_on.html ).

I'm just curious. How many urban Montessori schools did you visit on those trips? How many "free" schools? How many public schools? I'm just trying to get a sense of the purpose of your research.
- Ira Socol

Posted by: irasocol | September 1, 2010 10:40 PM | Report abuse

Ira Socol's points fall into two categories; on the issue of individual abuses at particular KIPP schools, I have no reason to doubt his assertions, though some of them are a matter of interpretation. But it would be helpful if Mr. Socol would, in criticizing the educational philosophy that KIPP schools follow, specify other schools that use a different philosophy -- a more Montessori-type philosophy, perhaps, and that are open admission at the same level as KIPP (i.e. free, minimal paperwork for admission, etc) and that produce learning gains that are better than KIPP's.

Posted by: jane100000 | September 2, 2010 9:21 AM | Report abuse

jane100000:
I can point you to many schools making great gains with far more "open" environments. Most of these are, in fact, "traditionally financed" public schools built on inclusive models, but they are working with the kind of systemic change necessary - creating districts which, when possible, cross community boundaries, providing equalized funding, including high levels of professional development. These are the areas where there is little or no pressure for KIPP. One example I might offer is Michigan's Godfrey-Lee District, with demographics closely matching those of KIPP, this public school draws in many "school choice" students, and though it might not match the test scores of East Grand Rapids, its graduates do very well in life.
Which raises the question: How Jane, do you measure schools? http://education.change.org/blog/view/evaluate_that_-_schools_for_children
- Ira Socol

Posted by: irasocol | September 2, 2010 10:04 AM | Report abuse

Ira, not just by test scores, for sure. Altho the Godfrey-Lee NAEP scores aren't very encouraging especially for minorities and low-income children. My benchmark is how well students do after they finish their schooling -- not something you can tell from a website, unfortunately. I'm curious as to why this particular school district is your comparison for KIPP, as 75% of the students are Anglo or Asian?

Posted by: jane100000 | September 2, 2010 11:00 AM | Report abuse

"Thanks very much for your comment. I would still like to run a more detailed post by you that tells us exactly what you saw and heard at which schools that led to the conclusions you draw."
Sorry Jay, Ira's blog posts are already more detailed, and better substantiated with both research and direct observation, than your articles, or your books.

Posted by: mcstowy | September 2, 2010 12:45 PM | Report abuse

Jane:
Lowest "resources" (tax-base) in Michigan. Very high poverty. Over 60% non-English speaking at home. (There is one Asian family that I know of.) About 65% of district adults have no high school diploma. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds/singledemoprofile.asp?county1=2616080&state1=26 Great NAEP? No. But many kids on to college, and other post-secondary success. With a very involved, very creative, administration and staff http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/02/west_michigan_school_district.html I see them as a model of a district which takes in everyone, sends no one away

Posted by: irasocol | September 2, 2010 1:09 PM | Report abuse

... [hit enter too fast], and yet treats students as fully human, and as fully capable of handling sophisticated learning.
- Ira Socol

Posted by: irasocol | September 2, 2010 1:14 PM | Report abuse

for ira --- I think if you tell us what was said, the KIPP people will be put in a real bind if it is as compelling as you feel it is. They might come up with some excuse, but the blog is not for them, but for readers, and readers would see your point even if KIPP tried to shrug it off. 

As for yr good question on my travel, which has been asked before here and answered, all of my travels to KIPP schools have been paid by me. I have been a reporter for more than 40 years and know that you kill yr credibility if you take money from a source. I did a lot of traveling to KIPP cities while writing my book about KIPP, Work Hard. Be Nice, and then did some more traveling, often to KIPP cities, to promote it. My wife can verify that all the money came from the family bank account, altho we were able to write much of it off as a business expense. I am very cheap. That worried some people. Particularly when I described the Executive Inn and Suites in Houston, where the clerk at the main desk gave me the TV remote since, he said, they couldn't afford the loss of keeping them in the rooms.
For Jim, tfteacher and others---my apologies for my last post. The headline on that online version, "Forget about the achievement gap,' certainly left the impression I wanted people to henceforth ignore the gap. The column itself was more balanced, thank goodness. They shouldn't let that blogger write his own headlines.

Posted by: Jay Mathews | September 2, 2010 2:48 PM | Report abuse

Mr. Mathews,
I appreciate the answer on the expenses. What was the intent of this trip? That is, why KIPP? Did you look at the other schools in each community? Trying to get a sense of what drove your research in this direction.

As for the quotes: I was not doing an "approved" study. I did not ask anyone if I might quote them. And again, I do not think language is the issue. I know these positions seem odd to a journalist, but I work from differing standards.
- Ira Socol

Posted by: irasocol | September 2, 2010 5:07 PM | Report abuse

Ira---if you read the book, which I hope you do, it explains in the first couple of pages why I decided to do a book about KIPP. Since a book I wrote in the 1980s about Jaime Escalante and his school, Garfield High, I have been investigating schools that have found ways to significantly increase the academic achievement of low-income students. I heard about KIPP in 2001, did a lot of reporting, and realized they had compiled a better record than any other organization for taking low-income kids to a new level, and had done it through wonderful teaching and more time, which was reassuring. The standard rap about KIPP being a drill and kill enterprise, everybody memorizing the answers, was as far from the truth as it could be. The schools were being started by some of the most creative teachers I had ever met, and they were hiring for their staffs people just like them, and like the two founders, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, whom the book is mostly about. I think it is a very important story and have continued to cover it on this blog, and will probably do another KIPP book when the big Mathematica study of KIPP---the largest randomized study every of a charter network--is completed.

Posted by: Jay Mathews | September 2, 2010 5:21 PM | Report abuse

I continue the conversation here http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/09/on-kipp-and-question-does-philosophy.html
- Ira Socol

Posted by: irasocol | September 3, 2010 9:09 AM | Report abuse

For Ira---for most school visits I must call the school district PR office and get permission. For schools where I have developed a relationship with the principal, I call that person and ask what would be a good time. Three of my books were focused on specific high schools, where I visited for 2 or 3 years, and I just showed up whenever I wanted without calling ahead since the principal had approved the project and I had the run of those places--Garfield High in East LA, Mamaroneck High in Westchester, NY,and Mt. Vernon High in Fairfax County, Va. For KIPP schools, which have an open door policy, about half the time I call ahead and make an appointment with the principal and half the time I just show up. When I visited that Indianapolis KIPP school, I was just showing up without an appointment.
If there is breaking news, or if we (the Post) have been frustrated in all attempts to visit a school where we think there is news, we will show up and try to slip in, or stand outside and interview students as the leave at the end of the day. We can get their parents numbers that way, and parents often have teacher home numbers.

Posted by: Jay Mathews | September 3, 2010 6:40 PM | Report abuse

It is interesting, as Ira points out, that the only schools that a sour taste in Jay's mouth are those he visited without an appointment.  Hmm.

Mindless Jay Mathews Declares DC Achievement Gap Mindless Measure

Yesterday:

The D.C. mayoral race is deeply split on most issues, but everyone agrees on one thing: We must reduce the achievement gap between minority and white students. It is too bad, then, that that the gap is such a mindless measure of school progress.

Obviously, Jay has joined other bold reformers such as the recently-fired Bret Schundler of New Jersey whose efforts to remake New Jersey schools in the corporate image led him to denounce New Jersey Public Schools as a “wretched system” and the state’s #1 national rankings on the NAEP in both 4th and 8th grade reading and math as “irrelevant.”  For bold reformers like Jay and Bret, or Arne and Michelle, if the facts don’t support your desired results anymore, those facts no longer matter. Poof.

Jay and the the new generation of reformers doing the same thing as the last generation (when will they become the status quo?) would rather look at test score growth over time, especially when big achievement gap closing claims by your favorite politicians do not materialize.  Focusing on individual gains makes the disparity between the haves and the have nots much easier to ignore, since this new value-added universe is not even interested in those troublesome group comparisons any longer that are based on poverty chasm.  Unless, of course, the reformers need to shut down your neighborhood school and turn it into a corporate-styled testing madrasah, i. e., charter school.  Then your percentile ranking becomes a crucial tool in deciding who is in that bottom five percent that just keeps replenishing itself as the last group is scraped off to become charterized.

ETS Report: Achievement Gap Static During Last 20 Years of Test and Punish

So Obama and the Oligarchs are launched on another generation of the same edu-diversions and privatization schemes that pretend to treat the symptom, while ignoring the problem of poverty, racism, and the corrosive effects of capitalism run amok.  Will it matter that the f-ing Educational Testing Service is now waving the red flag?  What will it take? 

From the ETS Press Release today (my bolds):

After a long period of progress in narrowing the Black-White educational attainment and achievement gaps, that progress has stalled, according to a new report from Educational Testing Service titled, "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped." Moreover, some research indicates that reaching equality could take 50 to 100 years if current patterns continue.

It has been 45 years since Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his landmark and controversial report on the deterioration of low-income Black families, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," and evidence gathered over the past several decades supports the assertion that deteriorating family structure, neighborhoods, and schools threaten to undermine the development of disadvantaged children.

This report, written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley of ETS's Policy Information Center, examines the periods of progress and stagnation over the past several decades in closing the achievement gap; looking for the factors that contributed to the progress and the reasons for why it stopped.

Coley, Director of the ETS Policy Information Center explains, "National Assessment of Educational Progress data starting from the 1970s reveal a steady narrowing of the gap until the late 1980s. The last 20 years have essentially yielded a period of stability in spite of a lot of national attention to the gap, and measures taken that were expected to narrow it. We want to know, 'why?'"

The report focuses on three time periods beginning with the 1970s and 80s during which a substantial narrowing of the gap was seen in the subjects of reading and mathematics. Next, the research shows that the decades since the late 1980s have produced a sustained period of no change in the gap. Finally, the authors go back to the beginning of the 20th Century when the gap in educational attainment levels first started to narrow with progress halting, ironically, for those born in the mid-1960s when landmark legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act created optimism for educational and societal equality.

Furthermore, Coley and Barton describe a number of developments that could be implicated in blocking continued progress — including sensitive ones — such as inadequate care in early childhood, the decline of communities and neighborhoods, the explosion of single-parent families, the employment plight of Black males, and stalled intergenerational mobility out of seriously disadvantaged neighborhoods. These areas are important because family, demographic and environmental factors can have a large positive or negative effect on student achievement.

The report points particularly to the lack of movement of succeeding generations out of seriously disadvantaged neighborhoods so the effect becomes cumulative as successive generations remain in these areas. "The data show that many Black people have been stuck in neighborhoods deprived of social and economic capital for several generations. Although only 5 percent of White children born between 1955 and 1970 grew up in highly-disadvantaged neighborhoods, 84 percent of Black children did so."

"Approaches to restart progress will require addressing this problem on multiple levels," Coley says. "Entire neighborhoods may have to be uplifted in terms of their economic capital, school quality, safety and health structures."

Barton, a senior associate with ETS's Policy Information Center adds, "The challenges to be faced in restarting progress in closing the gap are indeed daunting. However, the prospect of waiting 50 or 100 years — as economist Derek Neal of the University of Chicago has projected based on past trends — is simply unacceptable."

Download "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped" for free at http://www.ets.org/research/perc/pic/. Purchase copies for $15 (prepaid) by writing to the Policy Information Center, ETS, MS 19-R, Rosedale Road, Princeton, NJ 08541-0001; by calling (609) 734-5949; or by sending an e-mail to pic@ets.org. . . .

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Click slide to enlarge.

Segregationist Society Wonders Why Achievement Gaps Persist

The failure chart here is a snapshot of Arlington, Virginia, but it could be Most Anywhere, USA. While corporate reformers berate public school teachers and castigate parents and abuse children with cram-down testing, the story of the return to apartheid schooling remains a non-story for the media and an unacknowledged reality for the dolts in charge of state testing programs.

Where there is apartheid, there is poverty; where there is poverty, there is the achievement gap. Where there is the achievement gap, there is the preservation of privilege for White America. What could be more horrendously elegant? What kind of democracy so clearly embraces an educational system that defines success strictly by race and income? But then, what kind of democracy puts its future in the hands of corporate oligarchs to decide?

By Michael Lee Pope
Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Half a century has passed since the landmark Supreme Court Brown versus Board of Education, but Arlington County Schools still struggles with achievement results that remain separate and unequal. White students in the county enjoy the highest performance on standardized testing, with 97 percent of the county’s white students passing the English test and 95 percent of the white students passing the Math test. When the Virginia Department of Education released testing data earlier this month, white students were the only group to meet the benchmarks.

"I’m very concerned about this," said Emma Violand-Sanchez, a member of the Arlington County School Board. "We need to address the achievement gap, especially with these subgroups."

Although Hispanic students met the benchmark in English, they fell behind in Math. Black students did not meet federal standards in English or Math. Students who have a limited proficiency with English did not meet the federal objectives, nor did economically disadvantaged students. Students with disabilities had the lowest pass rates, with 68 percent of the students passing the English test and 59 percent of the students passing the Math test. State officials wanted to be clear that identifying students who were struggling should not be interpreted as a criticism of the student groups.

"This is not about blaming children," said Charles Pyle, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education. "This is about identifying where there are weaknesses to improve instruction." . . . .

How entirely and blindly pathetic. Perhaps when the fast-food corporate charter schools finally "improve instruction" by replacing all the poor public schools, the demand for accountability will disappear, as will the persistent and embarrassing reality of the death of social justice in education. Left will be children in the brainwashing academic chain gangs or the recalcitrants who will be dumped into the juvenile "justice" system. Finally, privilege will have been maintained and guaranteed for the shrinking white majority--at least until the violence starts. The future of the "democratic republic" is only as guaranteed as the control of it by white America (see the approval ratings of "rightwing terrorists").

As Economic Gap Widens - So Goes the Achievement Gap

Summer school is out for the summer.

It's the front page story today in the New York Times. Arne, what was that you were saying about extending the school year? And we thought Brownie was clueless.

Facing Deficits, Some States Cut Summer School

Here's an excerpt:

Since the 1970s, however, the value of rigorous summer school has gained increasing recognition because of research by a Johns Hopkins professor, Karl Alexander, and other sociologists showing that the academic achievement gap widens during summer vacations.

Low-income students who hold summer jobs or are idle, the research has demonstrated, forget more math and reading skills over the summer than their affluent classmates, who often receive intellectual stimulation in the summer from canoe trips, language camps or ballet lessons.

After 7 Years in the NCLB Pressure Cooker, Achievement Gaps Essentially Unchanged

The new NAEP numbers, as reported in the New York Times today:

By SAM DILLON

The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving the scores of blacks and Hispanics, according to results of a federal test considered to be the nation’s best measure of long-term trends in math and reading proficiency.

Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students, leaving the achievement gap stubbornly wide, despite President Bush’s frequent assertions that the No Child law was having a dramatic effect.

Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. That was well before the 2001 passage of the No Child law, the official description of which is “An Act to Close the Achievement Gap.”

“There’s not much indication that N.C.L.B. is causing the kind of change we were all hoping for,” said G. Gage Kingsbury, a testing expert who is a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association in Portland. “Trends after the law took effect mimic trends we were seeing before. But in terms of watershed change, that doesn’t seem to be happening.”

The results no doubt will stoke debate about how to rewrite the No Child law when the Obama administration brings it up for reauthorization later this year. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said he would like to strengthen national academic standards, tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoods, and make other adjustments. “We still have a lot more work to do,” Mr. Duncan said of the latest scores. But the long-term assessment results could invigorate those who challenge the law’s accountability model itself.

Obama and Duncan could actually do something by pushing for the end of apartheid schools and by pushing to end poverty. But these guys don't have any bailouts for poor folks in poor communities, who are offered only one choice: more apartheid chain gangs run by corporations. No shame, no apology, no caring for the end of care, and if you are Margaret Spellings, you expect the Medal of Freedom.

Remember the Achievement Gap?

Text below is from the NEA Today, which has come out its hidey hole now that the big bad Bush is building a new security perimeter for his return to Texas. What a bunch of cowards. If this crew of self-serving bureaucrats had mobilized their 2 million members eight years ago, we would not have had this debacle to begin with.

But, instead, they played it safe, just as they are about to play it safe again as they cuddle up with the corporations to strangle the public schools with more tests and more money based on test scores.

What the charts show, of course, is that trading in the bigotry of low expectations for the racism of NCLB's impossible demands has done nothing to close the achievement gap.

. . . .Is it working? Or as President George W. Bush once asked, “Is our children learning?” We hear a lot about test-stressed students, curricula stripped down to make way for teaching to the test, and exasperated teachers leaving the profession. But NCLB supporters say if students do better in reading and math, and if low-income, minority students close the achievement gaps, that’s worth the agony.

And we do hear that in many schools, teachers are getting out of their silos and working together to help all children achieve.

What’s more, scores on state tests are definitely climbing.

So-is that proof of success?

No, it isn’t, according to leaders in the science of testing. Scores always rise when you put high stakes on a particular test, whether or not students actually know more. This phenomenon even has a name: Campbell’s Law.

Harvard University Professor Daniel Koretz, a leading test researcher, explains it with an analogy to polling before an election. Pollsters can’t call every voter. Instead, they choose a small sample. Let’s say a campaign polled 1,000 likely voters and poured all their energy into winning over just those voters, ignoring everyone else. They would probably see encouraging gains among the 1,000 voters-and then lose the election by a landslide.

Koretz says a math test works the same way: No test can cover all the skills from every angle that students should master, so the test is just a small sample. If you focus on teaching kids to correctly answer problems that use a particular question format and only cover a narrow range of skills, students will do better and better-that is, until someone asks them questions in a different way, or measures a different set of skills from the larger curriculum.

Koretz carried out an ingenious demonstration of this phenomenon in the 1980s in a school district he had to agree not to name. The stakes on test scores in that district were “laughably low compared with today’s,” he says, but teachers did feel pressure to get scores up.

When the district switched to a new test, Koretz says, “scores dropped like a rock.” But over the next four years, they rose steadily.

Now comes the clever part: Koretz gave students the old test, the one that no longer carried high stakes so teachers didn’t prep students to take it. Their scores plummeted. His conclusion: Four years of rising scores did not reflect real achievement, just teaching to a new test.

Research on scores on high-stakes tests in Kentucky and Texas also showed Campbell’s Law in action.

So to see whether NCLB is really boosting achievement, we can’t rely on high-stakes state tests. We need to look at scores on a test for which students don’t get prepped.

Luckily, there is one: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It’s given to large, random samples of students periodically, but there are no scores for individual schools so nobody’s career is at stake.

Last Update January 9 2:35 pm

I'm not sure the crack staff at NEA was doing with their charts, but here are a couple from NAEP that demonstrate the achievement gaps over time. For some odd reason the Age 9 chart would not upload, but it shows a very similar pattern. For more up-to-date comparisons from NAEP, go here.

Click chart to enlarge.

The Corporate Achievement Gap

Peter Campbell has the scoop:

The Associated Press ran a story on August 12, 2008, citing a report from the Government Accountability Office that revealed that two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts. And, according to the report, about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes altogether over the same period.

How ironic in the age of No Child Left Behind that the GAO - the Government Accountability Office - would be the one that would point out corporate America's lack of accountability when it came time to paying the bills in this country.

It's clear to me that we have a Corporate Achievement Gap here. What is the Corporate Achievement Gap? The Corporate Achievement Gap is the difference between what taxpayers paid into the general coffers -- for roads and bridges, for schools and fire trucks -- and what 25 percent of U.S. corporations did not put in. This gap is an achievement gap because it underscores the potential for achievement if only these corporations would help fill this gap.

But they are simply not doing their part, not shouldering their load, not paying their dues.

Right now, the US federal government pays for between 7 and 10 percent of the total budget for public preK-12 education. The other 90 to 93 percent is paid for by state and local taxpayers.

Imagine, if you would, what kind of impact there would be if the US federal government doubled its current investment in public education from about 10 percent to 20 percent. Imagine the difference this could make.

In his amazing book Class and Schools, Richard Rothstein wrote:

All told, adding the price of health, early childhood, after-school, and summer programs, (the) down payment on closing the achievement gap would probably increase the annual cost of education, for children who attend schools where at least 40% of the enrolled children have low incomes, by about $12,500 per pupil, over and above the $8,000 already being spent. In total, this means about a $156 billion added annual national cost to provide these programs to low-income children.

These are 2003 - 2004 data, and they're probably not completely accurate. But these numbers at least give you an idea of what it might take to actually close the educational achievement gap. They give you the sense that closing the educational achievement gap might actually be something that could be done.

But before we can close the educational achievement gap, we must first close the Corporate Achievement Gap.

Teachers and schools are being held accountable. It's time to start holding corporations accountable, too. We must demand that they contribute to the health and well-being of the country by paying their fair share.